the determination of the great gods To Sisuthros alone a dream I sent, and
he heard the determination of the gods.' When Bel had again taken counsel
with himself, he went up into the midst of the ship. He took my hand and
bid me ascend, even me he bid ascend; he united my wife to my side; he
turned himself to us and joined himself to us in covenant; he blesses us
(thus): 'Hitherto Sisuthros has been a mortal man, but now Sisuthros and
his wife are united together in being raised to be like the gods; yea,
Sisuthros shall dwell afar off at the mouth of the rivers.' They took me,
and afar off at the mouth of the rivers they made me dwell."

It is hardly necessary to indicate the points of agreement and
disagreement between this Babylonian account of the Deluge and that of
Genesis. The most striking difference between the two, that which first
meets the eye, is the polytheism of the Babylonian version, in contrast
with the monotheism of the Biblical narrative. Here, in place of the gods
of Chaldea, we are confronted by the one supreme Deity; we have no longer
to do with a Bel who requires the intercession of Ea before he will
consent not to destroy the guiltless with the guilty; it is the Lord
Himself who "said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground any more
for man's sake." In the Babylonian legend, moreover, Noah and Enoch have
been confounded together; Sisuthros is not only saved from the waters of
the flood, but translated to the abode of the gods. The vessel itself in
which the seed of life was preserved is not the same in the two accounts.
According to the Hebrew narrative, it was an ark; according to the
Babylonian poem, a ship. It is true that in one place it is called "a
palace," the word used being the same as that which in many passages of
the Old Testament is applied to God's "palace" of heaven; but it is
provided with a pilot, Buzur-sadi-rabi, "the Sun-god of the mighty
mountain," and Sisuthros is made to expostulate on the strangeness of
building a ship which should sail over the land. It must, however, be
noticed that the shrines in which the images of the gods were carried in
Babylonia were called "ships," and that these "ships" corresponded with
the ark of the Hebrew tabernacle.

The land of Nizir, in which the vessel of Sisuthros rested, was among the
mountains of Pir Mam, to the north-east of Babylonia. Rowandiz, the
highest peak in this part of Asia, rises a little to the north of the Pir
Mam,